A Pattern-Based Approach to Transform Natural Text From Laws Into Compliance Controls in the Food Industry

In the food industry, regulations support companies to specify what needs to be done to minimize the risks of processing, trade and consumption of inferior food products. Complying with regulations protects companies from expensive and negative perceived product recalls, sanctions and financial penalties. A compliant manufacturing process requires a process design that conforms to legal requirements, quality and safety standards. Regulations are generally described in natural text so that relevant information has to be retrieved and formalized before it can be used for process description. In this contribution, we use a sample of laws and an initial set of generic control patterns to explore the scope of food regulations and the extent of formalization that can be reached by applying control patterns. All in all, we present a pattern-based approach to turn natural text from laws into formalized machine-readable constructs that may serve as basis for a compliant process design.